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A general view shows the Chinese flag (C) hoisted over Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 3, 2015, a day ahead of the 26th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests. The Tiananmen pro-democracy protests were crushed on the night of June 3-4, 1989, when soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed civilians -- and by some estimates, more than 1,000.Fred Dufour/AFP / Getty Images

By the time the guns stopped firing, death sat heavy on the streets of Beijing. The 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square killed hundreds – perhaps more – and put a violent end to a surge in hopes for political change in China.

Thursday marks 26 years since that day and, as it does every year, China will do its best to block its people from remembering, installing soldiers on the streets near Tiananmen and scrubbing the Internet of any mention.

But among a small group of Canadians, June 4 will always bring back memories of a singularly challenging period in Ottawa, when diplomats struggled to understand what was happening, how to evacuate Canadians caught in it and, most strikingly, how to accommodate the Chinese officials who defected to Canada in the wake of the killings.

As events unravelled in China, Canada's External Affairs – as the Foreign Affairs Department was then called – set up a crisis-management group in Ottawa with televisions, 100 phone lines and extra staff. Under the guise of a training flight, Canada pre-positioned a military Boeing 707 transport plane in Tokyo, where it could be used to evacuate Canadians. Ottawa sent specialized radio equipment to Beijing to allow embassy staff to stay in touch if communications from China were cut – and, after the killing started, ordered junior staff to read hockey scores and white pages in order to keep open what phone lines to China they could secure.

It was "an extraordinary time," said Howard Balloch, who was then one of three senior officials on a China team in Ottawa and went on to become Canadian ambassador to China. He included a detailed account of Canada's response to the events of 1989 in his book, Semi-Nomadic Anecdotes.

"Everybody struggled with how to respond," he said in an interview. "Nobody knew what was going to happen."

Under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and External Affairs Minister Joe Clark, the Canadian government on at least two occasions called in – "carpeted," in diplomat-speak – the Chinese ambassador at the time, Zhang Wenpu, to discuss its unease with what was happening in China and, after June 4, horror over the killings.

But Canada at the time was a place where even senior Chinese officials expressed sympathy with the students. That created its own set of complications – in both Canada and China.

In May of 1989, Wan Li made the first visit to Canada by a chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China. In a speech in Toronto, he "praised the students for their patriotism and their efforts to promote democracy," according to an account in The Tiananmen Papers. At the Toronto event, a student pianist caused havoc when he began playing The Internationale, which had become a theme song among the Tiananmen Square protesters.

Mr. Wan was quickly summoned back home, but his views were not uncommon in Canada – even at the Chinese embassy.

"It was evident that a number of the embassy staff, and probably the Ambassador Zhang himself, were fundamentally pro-student," Mr. Balloch wrote in his book.

For some, the Tiananmen killings were too much to bear, and between nine and 11 – the exact number is debated – defected from an embassy that, at the time, employed perhaps 40 people.

"One or two would have seemed quite remarkable, in terms of the disciplined exercise of the embassy. When it got up to four, five, six and beyond it was quite significant," said Bruce Jutzi, who was on the China team with Mr. Balloch.

It's not clear what happened to those people, although they were likely questioned by Canadian intelligence and then handed over to immigration officials. "They were given some help in managing the rest of their lives," Mr. Jutzi said.

Ambassador Zhang was not so fortunate. After Ottawa, "he had no future any more in any government role," said Mr. Jutzi.

For Ottawa, meanwhile, one of the chief concerns after June 4 was the evacuation of Canadians in China, then thought to number more than 1,400. When China refused entry to the Canadian military 707 parked in Tokyo, External Affairs leaned on Rhys Eyton, then CEO of Canadian Airlines, to continue regularly scheduled flights. Ottawa eventually chartered two Canadian Airlines planes to assist in the evacuation, and sent cars draped in Canadian flags to Beijing university campuses, where they were able to drive past military checkpoints to pick up stranded students.

Some of the evacuations were more complicated: The Alberta government, under pressure from local families, demanded help for some paleontologists working in the Gobi Desert. "These people were far from the nearest city, and safe as a house" where they were, recalled Gordon Houlden, the current director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta. He was the third member of the China team in Ottawa in 1989. But at Alberta's insistence, Canada brought them to Beijing – to the heart of the violence – "because it was the only way to get them on to the chartered plane."

In the end, more than 800 people were evacuated.

At home, meanwhile, Ottawa struggled to craft a post-Tiananmen response that went beyond condemnation. Inside External Affairs, people lobbied for Canada not to sever all ties, since it was clear China would continue to be important long into the future. They partially succeeded: Canada maintained some of its aid programs, and never formally recalled its ambassador – although it did bring its chief Beijing diplomat at the time, Earl Drake, back to Ottawa for "consultations."

Still, even 26 years later, those with long histories in China wrestle with how the events of 1989 should continue to inform Canadian foreign policy – particularly as Ottawa makes trade its singular focus with Beijing. But the legacy of Tiananmen is "something terrible that happened, and the world should not forget. And in many places people have forgotten," said Gilliane Lapointe, a long-time Canadian diplomat who served several tours in China. "Human rights should not be discounted as an issue."

Mr. Houlden, however, calls the Tiananmen massacre "a very distorting event." Seeing China through a Tiananmen lens is the equivalent of judging the United States based solely on its history of racism, he argued. "It should not be excluded. But if you don't look at all the other accomplishments of that society, you're going to get a very warped view," he said. "That, to me, is the problem of Tiananmen."

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